my baby
We have endured lockdowns in Shanghai since March 2022, with just one day to buy provisions before going back to ‘house arrest’. My husband’s birthday fell on the second day of the current lockdown. I gave him, my husband of 22 years, two packs of our favorite Swiss chocolates. He slowly rationed one bag, not touching the second. Our birthdays are five weeks apart. In the spirit of making do with what we have, he surprised me by giving me the second bag of chocolate I gave him. He’s been saving it for me all this time. † Quynh Chow
My bright brother with freckle face
My cheerful, freckled younger brother was named “Joe High School” in his yearbook. Less affable, more cocky, I was voted ‘most likely to be heard’. But decades later, no sound could stop the addiction Matt developed to prescribe OxyContin. I pushed him to rehab; he said he hated me. After his fatal overdose in May 2020, I begged him for a sign that he didn’t hate me. On his birthday, I found the message he had written in his yearbook: “Jen…thanks for believing in me…I love you.” When I screamed for my brother, I know he heard me. † Jennie Burke
Addie’s life advice
Addie’s face was a sun-bronzed book cover, each line a different story. “Grandma,” I said, “tell me the secret of life.” I was 8. We were shelling peas under a large poplar tree in Alabama. She reached into the pocket of the flour sack dress she’d sewn and searched deftly with her fingers. Then, as if by teleportation or magic, an unfiltered Camel cigarette appeared in her mouth. She scratched a match, lit, took a long drag, and as smoke swirled around her head like a lazy tornado, she winked mischievously and whispered, “Try it all.” † David Powell
cold sun
Once we moved to England, my home country, my husband was not given a prescription for his testosterone. He knew he was a boy when he was five, but he hadn’t come out in decades. Three years after his transition, England had a chance to put his dead name behind her. But to get his prescriptions, the UK’s National Health Service put him on a roughly two-year waiting list for a gender assessment, as if he’d never switched. I had missed the cold sun of Britain with a fierce longing, but who stays in a country that abandons your husband saying, “I don’t want to live”? † Star Armstrong Tavares